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I felt a closeness to Cash I’d never felt for another person before. Not Rainey, not Bette, certainly not Lucille. Maybe that’s why I welcomed him back. When I sucked down the flame from the baton at the next night’s performance, I only saw one face when everything began to glow. His.
He sat at one of the tables by the stage, the ones that the tourists paid a fortune for. A look of lazy bemusement had spread across his face while I performed my routine, climbing up the pole and sliding down, leaving a trail of flame in my wake. He actually seemed proud of me.
This time, he didn’t surprise me when he greeted me in my dressing room, spinning my discarded top hat on his finger.
“Am I a witch?” I asked him as soon as he closed the door. He gave me time to settle after the show. I’d just come out of the shower, and I met his gaze in the reflection of the mirror as I wiped the leftover soot from my skin and hair. Many people speculated I dyed my waist-length hair red and wore gold contacts as part of my act, but they were wrong. That’s just the way I came. “And leave the light off. My eyes are still sensitive.”
Cash’s laugh was throaty, deep, and warm. It came easily to him, laughter. He tipped his head back and let himself enjoy it. “Is that what you think you are?” he asked.
I titled my chin up, and pulled my robe tightly around my body. “Is that what my mother was?”
Another chuckle. “Why do you think I would know that?” Cash considered my top hat before putting it on his own head.
Turning away from the mirror to face him, I thought maybe he’d take me more seriously. But I already shown my hand. I had no answers. For him, this was playtime. Whether he needed anything from me or not, he knew he had what I’d been so desperately seeking my whole life. I blinked when he turned on the light. The gold in his hazel eyes sparkled, and something about them was too familiar. I knew those eyes, but again, I didn’t know why. Back to the mirror. “Lucille said you knew her.” And destroyed her. I left that part out. Cash thought he was here for a comedy show, and he had the wrong theater.
“You can’t trust Lucille. I’m sure that’s not news,” Cash scolded me, but then asked softly, “How old are you, Holly?”
Panic rose from the pit of my stomach, electric shocks numbing my limbs. It was such a simple question. “I don’t know,” I whispered, leaning against my dressing table and bowing my head. “I feel like I’ve lived forever.”
Cash rose from the chair, my top hat still on his head and stood behind me, so close I shivered. He moved my hair away from my neck, his cold fingers brushing my skin, and placed it over my right shoulder. Our gazes locked in the mirror.
“Do you remember being a little girl?” His breath tickled my bare neck.
I nodded. The timeline didn’t make any sense, I could place myself anywhere in time, at any age, and I could mold and shape history. I had no proof of this, because when I snapped out of it, as Lucille called it, everything was recorded as it always was. Only I knew it was different. Rainey understood, but she couldn’t explain how it happened.
“How long have you been like this?” His gaze ran the length of my robe, and he didn’t have to clarify what he meant.
As far as everyone knew, I was twenty-four. “Decades. I think.” The concept of time simply made me dizzy.
Cash nodded; my answer didn’t surprise him. “You were born north of London in 1781, in a village called Moorfields.” My knees buckled, and if I didn’t clutch the table, I would have fallen. Even though I knew it wasn’t going to be something nice and neat like twenty-five years ago in Memphis, actually having the answer blew my mind.
“I remember things that happened before that.” I couldn’t face him. “And I think I remember you.”
“Do you?” Cash ran his fingers lightly along my hair, never touching my body. At first, I was terrified we’d burst into flames. We fireproofed my dressing room, but Cash wouldn’t survive. This information was just the tip of the iceberg. I needed him to stay alive. “What do you remember?” he asked.
Images jumbled in my brain as if someone spun a wheel. I saw Cash, bound, bloody, and burned, surrounded by laughing onlookers. His hair was shorter, and it was a different time, but I knew him. His eyes. No matter what humiliation was bestowed upon him, they remained proud. “Chaos.”
His silky laugh almost convinced me I was wrong. No one could actually survive the state I pictured Cash in, his skin purple from abuse, weak from starvation, and still have a sense of humor. But those eyes.
“That’s about right.” He moved closer to me, my robe pressed against my skin.
I couldn’t let him distract me. “But why do I remember things that happened before that? Like I was there. Is that even possible?”
“If you experienced it, then you made it possible, Holly.” His words were soft, and like time, they made me dizzy. “You’re a Bleed.”
My eyes snapped open. “A what?”
“You’re a Bleed. You age much more slowly than mortals, and your immortality extends in all directions. Forward, backward, and sideways if it’s possible.”
I had to turn and face him. Rainey would knock on the door any time now, and I needed to wrap this up before she came. She warned me stay away from Cash. We’d been fighting too much lately already. I hated it. “How many of us are there?”
“You mean how many of you are there.” Someone knocked on the door. I forced my eyes away from Cash, and he stepped back. The knock repeated, more forceful this time. Rainey would be able to sense I wasn’t alone, even if she couldn’t See Cash. “You might be the only one.”
“Then how do you know so much about it?” I kept waiting for the heat to rise in my body, but it didn’t. All the triggers, fear and frustration, were there, but no flames. The knocking became frantic.
“Because I do.” Cash placed my hat back on my head before he stepped to the door. His hand was on the doorknob when he turned back to me. “You’ve been patient this long, Holly. I want you to need me.”